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UCSB   LIBRARY 


LETTER 


HON.  HORACE  MAIN, 


CHARLES  ASTOR  BRISTED, 

LATB  FOUNDATION  SCHOLAR  OP  TRINITY  COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE,  AND 
ON3  OF  THE  TRUSTEES  OP  THE  ASTOR  LIBRARY. 


NEW-YORK: 
H.  KERNOT,  633  BROADWAY. 

1850. 


J.  P.  WBIOHT,  Printer, 
74  Fulton  Bt.,N.Y. 


LETTER, 
To  the  Honorable  Horace  Mann : 

SIR, 

Since  even  under  the  aristocratic  govern- 
ments of  the  Old  World,  a  cat  is  proverbially  per- 
mitted to  look  at  a  king,  much  more,  in  this  land 
of  democracy,  may  a  private  individual  address 
without  previous  introduction  a  Member  of  Con- 
gress. Undeniable  is  it,  that  our  private  individ- 
uals have  not  been  slow  to  use  and  abuse  this  pri- 
vilege, and  numbers  of  them  make  it  their  busi- 
ness to  bother  public  men  on  all  occasions,  in  or 
out  of  season.  Nor  should  I  have  been  willing  to 
follow  so  many  bad  examples,  had  you  not,  in 
some  sense,  yourself  given  the  provocation. 

Some  two  months  ago  I  happened  to  see  in  the 
Literary  World,  a  brief  and  complimentary  notice 
of  your  "  Thoughts  for  a  Young  Man,"  which 
mentioned  your  holding  up  Stephen  Girard  as  an 
example,  and  John  Jacob  Astor  as  a  warning. 
The  latter  gentleman  was  my  maternal  grandfa- 


ther,  and  having  been  accustomed  to  look  upon 
him  during  his  life,  and  to  regard  his  memory 
since  his  death,  with  a  considerable  amount  of  re- 
spect, I  naturally  felt  a  little  curious  to  see  what  he 
had  done  to  be  held  up  as  a  warning,  particularly 
what  legal  or  moral  crime  he  had  committed  to 
make  you  put  him  in  the  same  category  with  the 
ferocious  despot  Nicholas,  or  that  prince  of  swind- 
lers, the  ex-railroad  king,  George  Hudson — as 
the  same  journal  informed  me  you  did.  True,  in 
the  course  of  twelve  years  or  more,  during  which 
time  I  had  sufficient  opportunities  of  becoming  ac- 
quainted with  his  life  and  character,  I  had  never 
seen  or  heard  anything  to  induce  the  suspicion  of 
such  a  probability  ;  nevertheless,  as  it  is  notorious 
that  we  often  learn  a  great  deal  about  ourselves 
and  our  private  affairs  from  strangers,  it  seemed 
not  impossible  that  some  such  information  might 
be  obtained  in  the  present  instance. 

Of  Stephen  Girard,  I  knew  only  that  he  had 
been  the  richest  man.  or  one  of  the  richest  men,  in 
the  country  ;  that  he  was  a  Frenchman  by  birth, 
but  had  lived  most  of  his  life — a  very  solitary 
one,  without  near  relations  or  friends — in  Phila- 
delphia ;  that  he  left  the  greater  part  of  his  for- 
tune to  establish  a  college  for  orphans,  into  which 
no  minister  of  any  religious  denomination  was 
ever  to  set  foot,  under  any  pretext  or  circumstance 


whatsoever — which  always  struck  me  as  a  very 
ingenious  diabolical  contrivance  for  the  increase 
of  knowledge  without  virtue ;  and  that  the  college 
had  been  but  lately  opened,  after  a  delay  of  some 
fifteen  years.  Nor  did  I  gain  any  further  details 
from  your  "  Thoughts."  But  I  did  learn  the  gra- 
vamen of  Mr.  Astor's  offence  in  your  eyes,  viz. 
that  he  did  not  leave  more  than  one-sixteenth  of 
his  fortune  for  any  public  purpose  ;  conduct, 
which  you  profess  yourself  unable  to  palliate  or 
account  for  except  on  the  supposition  of  absolute 
insanity, — (p.  65,  note.) 

Now,  calling  a  man  "  insane,"  like  calling  him 
scoundrel,  rascal  or  vagabond,  is  a  very  convenient 
way  to  dispose  of  people  whom  we  do  not  like, 
while  we  are  unable  to  substantiate  anything  spe- 
cific against  them ;  but  it  is  a  weapon  which  cuts 
more  ways  than  one,  and  the  hasty  or  indiscreet 
resort  to  which  it  is  somewhat  dangerous  to  en- 
courage. Different  men  have  different  ideas  as  to 
what  constitutes  this  sort  of  insanity.  For  instance, 
when  you  make  an  abolition  speech  in  Congress, 
the  Southern  and  Southwestern  representatives 
would  doubtless  be  much  delighted  to  shave  your 
head  and  enclose  you  between  the  four  walls  of  an 
asylum,  and  would  be  prepared  with  a  wilderness 
of  arguments,  enough  to  convince  themselves  at 
least,  if  no  one  else,  that  you  fully  deserved  such 

A* 


treatment.  Or  when,  six  or  seven  years  ago,  you 
took  occasion  in  a  public  discourse  to  speak  very 
disrespectfully  of  the  ballot  and  universal  suffrage, 
I  will  engage  there  was  no  want  of  persons  who 
said  you  must  be  crazy  to  blaspheme  institutions 
which  to  them  were  like  an  appendix  to  the  Ten 
Commandments.  A  great  many  very  sensible, 
though  perhaps  common-place  people,  agree  in 
thinking  that  the  Massachusetts  transcendent  :>!- 
ists  have  been  made  mad — whether  by  too 
much  learning  or  not,  they  are  less  unanimous. 
I  have  no  doubt  we  could  find  many  devout  men, 
who  would  say  that,  to  found  an  institution  for  ed- 
ucation from  which  all  minister^  of  the  gospel 
were  systematically  excluded,  was  little  short  of 
the  act  of  a  madman.  In  fine,  there  is  a  popular 
tendency  to  confound,  by  a  loose  use  of  language, 
madness  with  unreasonableness  or  folly ;  and  in 
some  cases  to  aggravate,  in  others  to  excuse  ac- 
tions, by  assigning  to  them  as  a  motive,  insanity, 
when  at  most  they  can  only  come  under  the 
charge  of  irrationality,  and  very  often  are  refer- 
able only  to  eccentricity  or  peculiarity.  Yet  the 
distinction  is  not  so  very  subtle  or  metaphysical 
either — one  would  think  it  simple  enough.  You 
may  say  that  a  drunken  man  is  mad  for  the  time  ; 
that  a  very  angry  man  is  so  too.  Possibly,  but 
you  would  surely  never  say  in  any  serious  con- 


versation  or  writing,  that  a  nrran  was  insane  ac- 
cording to  any  legal  or  medical  sense  of  the  term, 
because  you  had  once  seen  him  in  a  violent  pas- 
sion, nor  yet  because  you  had  once  seen  him  in- 
toxicated. Every  man  who  commits  a  crime, 
nay,  every  man  who  wittingly  and  deliberately 
commits  sin,  or  acts  occasionally  contrary  to  the  dic- 
tates of  reason,  such  a  man's  mind  is  not,  therefore, 
permanently  disordered,  otherwise,  what  a  great 
madhouse  the  whole  world  would  make  !  But  the 
mention  of  crime  leads  me  to  the  real  cause  of  this 
abuse  of  words.  The  morbid  sympathy  shown  by 
a  certain  class  of  philanthropists  for  criminals, 
and  especially  for  the  more  atrocious  criminals, 
such  as  murderers,  has,  among  ways  of  screening 
such  wretches  from  condign  punishment,  suggested 
the  plea  of  insanity.  In  this  our  sentimentalists 
are  greatly  aided  by  the  craniologists,  many  of 
whose  speculations  go  directly  to  refer  all  great 
crimes  to  defective  mental  organization.  The 
public  mind  thus  becomes  accustomed  to  associate 
with  ideas  of  permanent  insanity,  individual  acts 
of  great  wickedness  or  irrationality.  A  clever 
legal  friend  of  mine  seriously  professes  a  theory 
that  every  person  is  a  monomaniac,  or  mad  upon 
some  one  point,  by  which  he  probably  means  to  say 
that  every  person  has  a  weak  point  on  which  he 
has  a  tendency  or  susceptibility  to  be  led  astray 
and  at  times  act  irrationally. 


8 

I  suppose  then,  your  saying  that  Mr.  A.'s  only 
excuse  for  leaving  his  fortune  to  his  relations  in- 
stead of  to  the  public,  is  to  be  found  in  the  suppo- 
sition of  his  insanity, — is  only  a  characteristically 
exaggerated  way  of  expressing  that  you  think  he 
made  a  foolish  and  unreasonable  disposition  of  it. 
Mr.  Girard,  on  the  contrary,  is  lauded  with  equal 
extravagance  for  the  establishment  of  his  college 
to  promote  irreligious  education  among  orphans, 
as  opening  a  fountain  of  blessedness  so  copious 
and  exhaustless  that  it  will  flow  on  undiminished 
to  the  end  of  time — (p.  64.)  To  judge  .of  the 
value  and  justice  of  this  condemnation  and  this 
laudation,  it  will  be  necessary  to  look  at  the  lives 
and  circumstances  of  the  two  men,  very  briefly, 
but  rather  more  in  detail  than  you  have  dons. 

I  have  taken  the  trouble  to  make  myself  some- 
what acquainted  with  the  history  of  Mr.  Girard, 
and  more  particularly  with  the  history  of  his  col- 
lege since  his  death.  The  difficulty  of  procuring 
the  necessary  documents  has  delayed  for  many 
weeks  the  appearance  of  this  little  epistle,  which 
would  otherwise  have  been  laid  before  you  a  few 
days  after  your  book  fell  into  my  hands. 

Stephen  Girard  was  a  native  of  France,  but  a 
citizen,  and  for  many  years  a  resident  of  Phila- 
delphia. He  was  a  bachelor,  and  had  no  near 
relatives  except  a  brother,  with  whom  he  was  not 


on  the  best  terms.  He  lived  unsocially,  and  was 
as  frugal  of  the  ordinary  courtesies  of  life  as  of 
his  gold.  As  a  merchant  and  banker,  he  accu- 
mulated "a  large  fortune,  variously  estimated,  but 
certainly  not  less  than  seven  or  eight  millions  of 
dollars.  It  does  not  appear  that  he  ever  enter- 
tained the  idea  of  distinguishing  himself  in  any 
other  walk  of  life.  Dying  without  intimate  friends, 
he  left  his  whole  property,  with  the  exception  of  a 
few  trifling  legacies,  to  establish  a  college  for 
orphans,  within  the  premises  appropriated  to  which  no 
ecclesiastic,  missionary,  or  minister  of  any  sect  whatso- 
ever, is  ever  to  be  admitted  for  any  purpose-*  The 
plan,  material,  and  dimensions  of  the  collegiate 
buildings  were  most  particularly  specified,  but  insu- 
perable architectural  difficulties  prevented  these 
directions  from  being  carried  out  to  the  letter. 
To  support  the  roof  of  the  main  building,  it  was 
necessary  to  erect  a  portico  of  Corinthian  co- 
lumns— a  lucky  necessity,  as  it  enabled  the  archi- 
tect to  convert  a  very  plain  into  a  very  splendid 
exterior.  For  fifteen  years  the  college  was  in 
embryo,  owing  partly  to  these  architectural  diffi- 
culties, and  partly  to  others,  some  of  which  I  cannot 
find  prominent  allusion  to  in  any  of  the  reports  or 
documents  emanating  from  the  institution.  There 

*  See  the  ninth  subdivision  of  the  twenty-first  clause  of 
his  will.  -" 


10 

have  been  rumors  of  obstinate  and  protracted 
litigations,  but  since  about  these  xXe'og-  o/ov  axouo/xsv, 
I  know  nothing  about  them  except  from  hearsay, 
we  may  pass  them  briefly  over.  One  might  sus- 
pect without  being  very  superstitious,  that  these 
delays  were  the  first  judgment  of  the  Almighty  on 
an  institution  established  in  defiance  of  him.  At 
any  rate,  let  one  thing  be  borne  in  mind, — the  col- 
lege has  only  been  in  operation  two  years.  All 
your  fine  talk  therefore  about  "  opening  a  fountain 
of  blessedness,"  &c.  is  quite  gratuitous,  being 
founded,  not  on  any  actual  experience  or  obser- 
vation of  the  workings  of  this  particular  instance, 
but  on  the  general  assumption,  that  the  acquisi- 
tion of  knowledge  or  mental  improvement  must 
necessarily  in  all  cases  be  a  blessing,  which  is 
notoriously  a  disputed  point.  If  we  come  to 
d  priori  reasoning  on  the  matter,  it  might  be  urged 
with  quite  as  much  plausibility,  that  an  educational 
institution  based  on  such  a  principle  as  the  syste- 
matic exclusion  of  all  definite  Christianity,  could 
not,  from  its  very  nature,  prosper.  Indeed,  this 
clause  has  been  a  great  stumbling  block  to  the 
various  eulogists  of  Mr.  Girard,  and  it  is  painfully 
amusing  to  see  the  various  attempts  they  make  to 
gloss  it  over.  They  lay  great  stress  on  the  fact, 
that  he  does  not  express  any  hostility  to  Chris- 
tianity, but  only  a  fear  of  the  "  clashing  doctrines" 


11 

and  "controversy"  of  "  such  a  multitude  of  sects." 
Now,  as  Christianity  is  made  up  of  the  various  de- 
nominations of  Christians,  this  is  something  like 
cutting  off  a  man's  limbs  piecemeal  while  profess- 
ing not  to  hurt  the  man  himself.  The  children 
are  to  be  brought  up  "  sober,  truthful,  indus- 
trious," "according  to  the  purest  principles  of 
morality  ;"*  there  is  nothing  said  about  their 
being  brought  up  Christians,  and  certainly  they 
are  not  to  be  brought  up  according  to  the  tenets 
of  any  denomination  or  denominations  of  Chris- 
tians, all  such  teaching  being  stringently  excluded 
from  the  college.  And  as  all  Christians  belong 
to  some  denomination,  if  Mr.  Girard  intended  that 
his  scholars  should  be  Christians,  either  he  must 
have  looked  forward  to  their  constituting  a  sect  of 
their  own,  or  he  must  have  had  some  idea  of  a 
general  Christian,  without  any  distinctive  rites  or 
theological  opinions,  like  the  general  man  of  Plato, 
and  those  who,  after  him,  believed  in  the  inde- 
pendent existence  of  general  ideas  apart  from 
their  individual  attributes — which  is  a  very  inge- 
nious metaphysical  notion  (though  even  as  that,  it  is 
now  pretty  much  exploded,)  but  not  to  be  carried 
out,  or  conceived  of  as  able  to  be  carried  out,  in 
real  practical  life.  It  is  possible  that  one  of  these 

*  See  the  same  clause  of  the  will. 


12 


alternatives  may  have  been  in  Stephen  Girard's 
mind ;  it  is  more  probable  that,  not  being  really  a 
Christian,  he  did  not  see  the  use  of  Christianity, 
while,  as  a  keen  practical  man,  he  had  a  sharp 
eye  for  the  abuses  of  sectarian  polemics.  In- 
dustry, temperance,  veracity,  all  the  business  vir- 
tues, he  adored,  but  had  not  sufficiently  enlight- 
ened views  to  perceive  the  intimate  dependence  of 
"the  purest  principles  of  morality"  on  the  Chris- 
tian religion.  Hence  his  scheme  of  turning  all 
clergymen  bodily  out  of  the  college,  because 
different  sects  have  a  tendency  to  wrangle,  which 
seems  to  me  about  on  a  par  with  the  conduct  of  a 
man  who  should  found  an  asylum,  and  because 
there  are  Allopaths,  and  Homoeopaths,  and  Hydro- 
paths,  and  various  other  paths  and  ways  of  kill- 
ing and  curing,  the  followers  of  which  are  accus- 
tomed to  abuse  one  another  respectively,  should 
prohibit  every  M.  D.  whatsoever  from  entering 
the  premises  of  the  said  asylum. 

One  effect  of  this  restriction,  I  think,  must  be 
obvious  to  any  one  who  considers  the  matter 
seriously.  It  has  a  perilous  tendency  to  give  the 
scholars  a  prejudice  against  all  clergymen. 
These  orphans  are  fed,  clothed,  and  taught  gratui- 
tously, they  naturally  are  grateful  to  their  bene- 
factor, and  learn  to  respect  his  memory  and  value 
his  opinions.  They  find  out  that  no  ministers  of 


13 

the  Gospel  are  allowed  to  enter  the  college.  If 
they  inquire  into  the  reason  of  this  prohibition,  it 
will  reach  their  minds  in  some  such  form  as  this — 
that  it  was  because  ministers  of  different  sects  are 
apt  to  quarrel.  I  do  not  see  how  the  prestige  can 
be  otherwise  than  unfavorable.  As  Mr.  G. 
intended  that  the  children  should  be  left  to  "adopt 
such  religious  tenets  as  their  maturer  reason 
might  enable  them  to  prefer,"  he  probably  was 
afraid  of  their  acquiring  a  prejudice  in  favor  of 
some  denomination  while  at  college,  which  would 
be  most  effectively  prevented  by  giving  them  an 
impartial  prejudice  against  the  ministers  of  all 
denominations. 

One  word  more  before  taking  leave  of  Stephen 
Girard.  The  desire  of  immortality  embraces 
this  world  as  well  as  the  next.  Man  longs  to 
perpetuate  his  name  upon  earth.  Most  of  us 
01  tfoXXof  seek  to  do  it  in  the  way  alluded  to  by 
Plato.  Great  spirits  do  it  by  splendid  achieve- 
ments of  genius.  Girard  was  not  in  a  position  to 
continue  his  name  and  memory  by  either  of  these 
methods.  He  had  no  family ;  he  was  not  a  dis- 
tinguished man  in  politics,  science,  or  literature. 
All  his  greatness  consisted  in  his  fortune.  This, 
and  his  name  in  connection  with  it,  he  could  pre- 
serve only  by  leaving  it  for  some  public  object ; 
and  the  disposition  which  he  did  make  of  it,  for 


14 

the  instruction  of  men's  minds  to  the  neglect  of 
their  souls,  was  not  exactly  the  best  conceivable, 
nor  the  most  likely  to  "  open  a  fountain  of  bless-* 
edness  to  the  end  of  time." 

John  Jacob  Astor,  like  Stephen  Girard,  was  a 
foreigner,  who  settled  in  this  country  and  made  a 
large  fortune  by  mercantile  pursuits.  Unlike 
him,  he  had  a  family ;  unlike  him,  too,  he  as- 
pired to  be  something  more  than  a  mere  man  of 
business.  Though  not  a  liberally  educated  man, 
he  enjoyed  the  society  of  literary  men ;  though 
possessing  no  extraordinary  means  of  political  in- 
formation  or  training,  he  saw  further  into  the 
interests,  capacities,  and  destiny  of  the  country  of 
his  adoption,  than  those  who  were  at  the  head  of 
the  government.  He  had  visions  of  founding  a 
great  colony,  and  these  visions  were  only  pre- 
vented becoming  realities  by  the  short-sightedness 
of  our  rulers.  It  would  be  superfluous  for  me  to 
dilate  upon  the  circumstances  of  his  Pacific  expe- 
dition and  settlement :  they  have  already  been 
celebrated  by  the  one  man  in  America  most  capa- 
ble of  doing  them  justice.  Mr.  Astor  asked  of  the 
government  but  one  sloop  of  war  and  a  lieutenant's 
commission  for 'himself;  with  these  he  promised  to 
defend  the  territory  since  so  famous  as  the  Oregon, 
and  he  could  have  done  it,  for  the  aborigines  there 
were  then  our  friends.  Our  government  did  not 


see  the  importance  of  the  region,  and  suffered  it 
to  be  captured  by  the  British,  and  afterwards, 
under  the  treaty  of  joint  occupation,  to  fall  virtually 
into  the  hands  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  who 
acquired  the  confidence  of  and  control  over  the 
natives.  The  consequences  of  this  oversight  were, 
first,  that  during  a  period  of  nearly  thirty  years 
enormous  profits,  which  would  otherwise  have 
accrued  to  American  citizens,  flowed  into  the 
pockets  of  British  subjects ;  and,  secondly,  that 
at  the  end  of  that  time  the  question  of  dis- 
puted territory  tore  open  old  wounds,  revived  the 
worst  animosities  which  had  been  rapidly  dying 
away,  and  nearly  involved  the  two  countries  in  a 
terrible  war.  The  clear  head  which  would  have 
prevented  these  losses  and  mischiefs  distinctly 
foresaw  them.  After  the  treaty  of  Ghent  was 
concluded,  Mr.  Astor  said  to  his  friend,  Albert 
Gallatin,  "  I  am  very  much  pleased  with  all  that 
you,  gentlemen,  [the  Commissioners,]  have  done, 
but  there  are  some  things  which  you  ought  not  to 
have  left  undone.  You  should  have  settled  more 
definitely  the  question  of  the  Columbia  territo- 
ry." Mr.  Gallatin  was  a  most  able  and  long- 
headed "man,  but  even  he  did  not  appreciate  the 
correctness  of  his  friend's  views,  and  attributed  to 
personal  feelings  the  importance  which  Mr.  A.  at- 
tached to  the  subject.  He  answered  with  a  smile, 


16 

"  Never  mind,  Mr.  Astor,  it  will  be  time  enough 
for  our  great-grandchildren  to  talk  about  that  in 
two  hundred  years."  "  If  we  live,"  replied  the 
-other,  "  we  shall  see  trouble  about  it  in  less  than 
forty  years."  He  lived  to  see  his  prediction  veri- 
fied within  the  given  time.  And  this  is  the  man 
whom  you  represent  as  a  mere  skinflint,  who  had 
no  idea  beyond  his  money-bags. 

When  Mr.  Astor  found  that  his  efforts  for  the 
public  benefit  were  not  understood,  he  did  what  it 
would  be  well  if  more  people  did  now-a-days — he 
confined  himself  to  his  own  business,  and  by  it  a- 
massed  a  fortune,  stated  by  his  executors  to  be  a 
little  less,  but  generally  presumed  to  be  a  little 
more  than  eight  millions  of  dollars.  Of  this  he 
bequeathed  the  great  bulk  to  his  eldest  son,  a  res- 
pectable competence  to  his  daughter  and  grand- 
children, fifty  thousand  dollars  to  the  poor  of  his 
native  village  in  Germany,  and  four  hundred 
thousand  for  the  establishment  of  a  public  library 
in  this  city. 

It  is  not  generally  considered  that  Mr.  Astor's 
will  was  in  all  respects  an  equitable  one,  and  I 
certainly  should  be  the  last  to  maintain  that  it  was. 
I  do  believe,  however,  that  he  intended  to*  provide 
handsomely  for  all  his  near  relatives,  but  that,  du- 
ring the  latter  years  of  his  life,  when  his  bodily 
infirmities  prevented  him  from  taking  note  of  mat. 


17 

ters  that  did  not  fall  immediately  under  his  daily 
observation  at  home,  he  was  imposed  upon  by 
lawyers  and  other  designing  men.  Be  this  as  it 
may,  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  question 
between  us,  for  you  do  not  blame  John  Jacob 
Astor  because  he  left  too  little  to  some  of  his 
relatives,  but  because  he  left  anything  to  any  of 
them. 

To  return,  then,  to  the  Astor  Library.  It  is 
very  easy  to  sneer  at  a  bequest  of  "  only  half  a 
million,  or  less  than  half  a  million  of  dollars;" 
words  cost  nothing,  and  any  man  can  afford  to  be 
liberal  of  another's  property.  But  I  maintain 
that  the  endowment  is  not  a  despicable  one, 
whether  considered  positively  in  itself  or  com- 
paratively with  reference  to  Mr.  Astor's  fortune. 
It  is  not  an  every-day  occurrence  for  a  man  to 
leave  even  one-sixteenth  of  his  property  to  the 
public,  and  the  sum  left  is  sufficient  to  establish  a 
library  much  superior  to  any  now  existing  in  the 
country.  And  I  assert,  that  the  disposition  of  this 
money  was  a  particularly  good  and  wise  one,  and 
that  the  institution  is  eminently  calculated  to  be  a 
benefit  and  an  honor  to  this  city.  It  is  less  grand 
and  imposing  than  the  Girard  College ;  there  is 
less  of  it ;  but  it  is  also  less  open  to  objection,  and 
in  some  points  more  calculated  to  command 

B* 


respect.  How,  for  instance,  would  the  two  insti- 
tut:ons  strike  an  intelligent  foreigner  1  An 
Englishman  comes  here,  or  is  sent  here  by 
authority,  to  observe  the  state  of  education  and 
knowledge  among  us.  According  to  the  natural 
order  of  things  he  is  a  clergyman,  education  in 
England  being  placed  almost  entirely  in  the  hands 
of  that  class.  In  the  one  case,  he  finds  a  library 
open  to  all  decent  people  and  well  provided  with 
valuable  works  of  all  sorts  ;  he  is  politely  received 
by  the  accomplished  and  learned  superintendent, 
and,  after  seeing  all  that  is  to  be  seen,  is  informed 
that  the  trustees  will  be  much  obliged  to  him  if 
he  can,  from  his  special  professional  knowledge 
or  otherwise,  suggest  any  books  which  the  library 
ought  to,  but  does  not  possess.  In  the  other,  he 
has  a  very  fine  view  of  the  outside  of  a  grand 
edifice,  which  he  is  not  permitted  to  enter  for  fear 
of  causing  disputes  and  controversy  ! 

It  is  not,  however,  rny  present  intention  to  ela- 
borate a  panegyric  upon  my  grandfather,  nor  was 
the  vindication  of  his  memory  from  your  attack 
my  only  or  principal  motive  for  addressing  you 
this  letter.  That  attack  was  but  an  individual 
instance  of  misrepresentation ;  there  are  general 
opinions  broadly  announced  in  your  lecture  which 
provoke  animadversion— opinions  which  are  often 
promulgated  in  disreputable  quarters,  but  which 


I  never  before  detected  coming  from'  a  respectable 
source. 

On  your  61st  page  I  find  these  words:  '•'  Vast 
fortunes  are  a  misfortune  to  the  state.  They  con- 
fer irresponsible  power;  and  human  nature, 
except  in  the  rarest  instances,  has  proved  inca- 
pable of  wielding  irresponsible  power  without 
abuse.  The  feudalism  of  capital  is  not  a  whit 
less  formidable  than  the  feudalism  of  force.  The 
millionaire  is  as  dangerous  to  the  welfare  of  the 
community  in  our  day,  as  was  the  baronial  lord 
of  the  Middle  Ages." 

Such  language  coming  from  a  man  in  your  po- 
sition should  be  characterized  as  it  deserves,  with- 
out any  ^iphemism  or  affectation  of  delicacy.  It 
is  perilous  nonsense  :  it  is  a  groundless  and  wicked 
absurdity.  How  is  the  millionaire  dangerous  to 
the  communily  ?  What  special  privileges  has  he  ? 
What  exemption  from  the  law  ?  What  attribute 
of  feudalism  or  aristocracy  ?  In  what  possible 
sense  is  he  irresponsible  ?  What  power  does  his 
money  give  him  to  infringe  on  the  rights  of  others, 
or  to  force  their  consciences  ?  What  can  he  do  to 
divert  the  course  of  justice,  or  to  modify  the  expres- 
sion of  the  popular  voice  ?  Is  there  a  millionaire 
in  New- York  or  Boston  who  could  change  the  vote 
of  his  own  coachman  ?  To  talk  of  the  political  in- 
fluence of  a  rich  man  in  this  country,  is  like 


20 

talking  of  a  Highlander's  trousers,  or  an  anti- 
renter's  honesty,  or  Northern  aggressions  on  the 
South,  or  anything  which  is  notoriously  nothing 
at  all.  It  is  a  subject  proper  only  for  meta- 
physical treatises  like  Plato's  Sophist,  which 
discuss  the  existence  of  non-existences.  Or  is  the 
rich  man  able  to  pervert  justice  and  warp  the 
integrity  of  our  tribunals?  Desire  of  popularity, 
and  fear  of  opposing  the  tide  of  public  opinion, 
have,  it  must  be  owned  with  shame,  sometimes 
exercised  an  undue  influence  on  judges  and  jurors 
and  counsel,  but  I  think  it  would  not  be  possible 
to  produce,  from  the  annals  of  our  jurisprudence,  a 
single  case  in  which  a  suitor  has  obtained  more 
than  his  due,  or  a  criminal  escaped  the  punish- 
ment due  him,  by  the  mere  power  of  his  wealth. 
Having  had  some  opportunities  of  observing  what 
power  and  influence  wealth  really  does  confer 
among  us,  I  have  found  it  to  amount  usually  to 
this,  that  if  a  man  is  rich  and  known  to  be  liberal 
in  the  way  of  entertaining,  he  will  find  some  half- 
dozen  people  to  toady  him  for  the  sake  of  his 
dinners. 

In  fact,  so  far  from  a  rich  man's  having  any 
unfair  advantage  in  the  community,  he  labors 
under  many  positive  disadvantages ;  so  far  from 
his  being  to  treat  others  unfairly,  he  is  continually 
liable  to  be  unfairly  treated  himself.  The  popu- 


lar  prejudice  is  always  against  him,  whether  he 
is  a  party  in  a  law-suit,  or  a  mover  in  any  public 
matter,  or  whether  he  merely  expresses  an  opin- 
ion. Let  me  relate  an  anecdote  which  I  do  not 
merely  "  believe,"  but  know  to  be  authentic.  Two 
American  gentlemen  meet  abroad,  one  a  youth 
just  emerging  into  manhood,  with  some  literary 
taste  and  intellectual  promise,  the  other  a  middle- 
aged  man  of  the  world,  with  much  political  and 
social  experience.  Says  the  junior,  in  the  course 
of  a  long  talk  about  things  at  home,  "  When  I 
return,  I  mean  to  write  a  serie(us  of  pamphlets  on 
such  and  such  subjects,"  (naming  certain  leading 
questions  of  the  day.)  "  You  had  better  save 
yourself  the  trouble,"  replies  his  older  and  more 
experienced  friend,  "  for  the  very  fact  of  your 
being  a  rich  man  will  destroy  any  weight  that 
your  suggestions  might  otherwise  have."  Indeed, 
not  only  the  actual  possession,  but  the  bare  repu- 
tation or  suspicion  of  wealth,  will  often  annihilate 
a  man's  public  influence,  and  make  him  distrusted. 
A  person  with  wealthy  connections  and  refined 
habits  will  readily  incur  the  penalty  of  being  de- 
nounced as  a  millionaire  and  an  aristocrat — con- 
vertible terms  of  opprobrium  with  many  scribblers 
here.* 

*  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  there  is  no  aristocracy  in 
the  country — that  is  to  say,  no  set  or  sets  of  men  who  use 


If  we  look  for  the  cause  of  this  treatment,  we 
shall  not  he  very  far  wrong  in  attributing  it  to 
the  spirit  of  envy,  which  modern  democracy  pro- 
duces and  fosters.  There  has  been  a  great  deal 
said  about  the  peculiar  dangers  of  democracy, 
and  the  various  abuses  to  which  our  political  and 
social  forms  are  prone ;  but  it  really  does 
seem  to  me,  that  this,  which  has  never  to  my 
knowledge  been  specially  dwelt  upon  by  any 
writer  on  the  subject,  is  the  very  worst  evil 
chargeable  on  democracy.  As  soon  as  a  man 
does  anything,  or  has  anything  done  to  him,  to 
put  him  above  others  in  any  way,  he  violates  the 
first  article  of  the  democratic  creed,  "  Every 
man's  as  good  as  another."*  Instead  of  a  legiti- 
mate source  of  pride,  as  he  would  be  in  most 

their  own,  so  as  to  abuse  their  neighbors,  who  infringe 
upon  other  people's  rights,  and  exercise  a  tyranny  over 
other  people's  amusements  and  occupations.  There  is  a 
sufficiency  of  suck  aristocracy  among  us ;  so  far  as  my 
observation  has  extended,  it  is  composed  chiefly  of  the 
following  classes :  1st,  Omnibus  drivers — 2d,  Hotel- 
keepers— 3d,  Newspaper  editors — 1th,  Blackguards  and 
rowdies  generally,  such  as  the  people  who  stormed  the 
Opera  House,  and  drove  Macready  out  of  New- York. 

*  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  observe,  that  I  do  not  use 
the  words  democracy  and  democrats  in  their  technical  party 
sense.  I  am  quite  aware  that  you  are  called  a  whig,  and 
sometimes  vote  with  the  whigs  in  Congress. 


countries,  he  becomes  an  object  of  suspicion  and 
hatred.  We  see  the  greatest  and  worst  develop, 
ment  of  this  feeling  in  the  universally  admitted 
fact,  that  to  be  a  great  statesman,  and  generally 
acknowledged  as  such,  is  precisely  the  way  not 
to  become  President  of  the  United  States,  and  the 
little  germs  of  it  are  traceable  in  the  petty  local 
dislikes  felt  for,  and  annoyances  aimed  at,  any 
man  who  happens  to  have  a  finer  house,  larger 
library,  or  better  appointed  equipage,  than  his 
neighbors.  True,  as  the  spirit  of  admiration 
for  superiority  is  natural  to  man,  and  not  to  be 
altogether  eradicated  by  any  adverse  influences, 
there  are  some  kinds  of  excellence  which  still 
command  honor  among  us.  In  the  South  and 
South- West,  military  glory  is  at  a  premium,  and 
the  successful  general  meets  with  a  full  apprecia- 
tion of  his  merits.  In  the  North  and  East,  litera- 
ture, up  to  a  certain  point,  is  very  popular;  indeed, 
it  finds  great  sympathy  as  a  very  excellent  demo- 
cratic pursuit,  almost  every  third  man  or  woman 
being,  in  some  sense  or  nonsense  of  the  term,  an 
author.  And  a  literary  man  stands  more  chance 
of  being  spoiled  by  flattery,  than  soured  by  de- 
traction— unless  he  should  dare  to  oppose  the  cur- 
rent of  any  popular  opinion  ;  in  that  case,  all  his 
talent  cannot  save  him.  With  these  exceptions, 
it  may  be  safely  affirmed,  that  as  soon  as  a  man 


24 


becomes  conspicuous  for  anything,  so  soon  is  he 
slandered  and  hated ;  and  of  no  class  of  persons 
is  this  truer  than  those  whom  you  stigmatize  as 
"  equally  dangerous  to  the  community  with  the 
baronial  lards  of  the  Middle  Ages." 

Take  an  obvious  example.  Our  newspapers, 
which  are  generally  conducted  by  average  speci- 
mens of  the  people  at  large,  which,  collectively, 
exercise  an  immense  influence  on  public  opinion, 
and  in  return,  pretend  with  tolerable  truth  to  be  a 
reflex  of  that  opinion,  have,  with  a  few  honorable 
exceptions,  a  special  penchant  for  abusing  rich 
men,  and  inventing  or  circulating  things  to  their 
prejudice.  If  a  rich  man  is  in  business,  of  course 
he  is  making  his  money  by  dishonest  practices. 
If  not  in  business,  he  must  necessarily  be  idle, 
and  therefore  vicious,  it  being  a  matter  of  course 
that  a  man  cannot  be  occupied,  unless  he  is  visi- 
ble so  many  hours  a  day  in  a  store  or  office,  and 
equally  so,  that  he  must  be  a  votary  of  dissipa- 
tion, unless  he  goes  through  a  certain  routine  of 
work  every  morning.  If  he  gives  money  for  any 
public  object,  he  is  not  praised  for  his  liberality, 
but  abused  for  not  giving  more.  If  he  spends  his 
wealth  in  fostering  art  or  literature,  he  ought  to 
have  built  hospitals  or  free-schools  with  it.  If  he 
is  in  any  trouble  or  affliction,  a  great  shout  of  joy 
is  set  up,  and  the  affair  is  placarded  as  much  as 


possible.  Now,  these  gentlemen  of  the  press 
know  pretty  well  their  own  pecuniary  interests, 
whatever  may  be  their  ignorance  on  other  impor- 
tant points  ;  and  with  all  their  horror  of  rich  men, 
have  a  knack  of  filling  their  own  pockets  comfor- 
tably ;  and  they  would  not  be  so  ready  to  abuse 
the  wealthy,  unless  it  paid  to  do  it. 

And  now,  sir,  you,  by  incorrect  and  mischievous 
assertions,  made  deliberately,  and  in  a  most  public 
manner,  are  doing  your  best  to  aid  and  abet,  and 
increase  this  prejudice  and  tyranny  of  an  unjust 
public  opinion. 

What  can  have  been  your  motive  or  reason,  or 
excuse,  for  so  doing  ?  It  is  just  possible  that  hav- 
ing, among  other  hobbies,  ridden  that  of  abolition 
pretty  hard,  and  having  become  thoroughly  im- 
bued with  a  detestation  of  the  injustice  involved 
in  the  idea  of  a  slaveholding  millionaire,  you  have 
come,  by  that  confusion  of  similar  ideas,  which  is 
the  commonest  of  American  fallacies,  to  associate 
wealth  with  oppression,  so  that  you  deem  the  fac- 
tory operative  the  slave  of  the  factory  owner,  the 
servant  of  the  master,  and  generally  the  employed 
of  the  employer.  To  this  suspicion,  a  color  is 
lent  by  the  sentence  on  your  next  page,  "  The 
power  of  money  is  as  imperial  as  the  power  of  the 
sword,  and  I  may  as  well  depend  upon  another 
man  for  my  head  as  for  my  bread."  Now,  I  will 
c 


not  stop  to  expose  the  inapplicability  of  such  a 
supposition  to  our  country, — that  has  been  done  al- 
ready often  enough.  I  will  only  say,  if  you  really 
believe  this,  then  you  are  the  most  inconsistent  of 
•men  in  keeping  up  an  agitation  in  and  out  of  Con- 
gress, against  Southern  slavery — you  are  a  most 
gratuitous  and  unwarrantable  meddler  in  pouring 
out  the  vials  of  your  wrath  on  the  inhabitants  of 
one  part  of  the  country,  for  practising  exactly 
what  exists,  by  your  own  statement,  under  a  dif- 
ferent form  in  your  own  part  of  the  country.  And 
the  representatives  from  Carolina  and  Georgia, 
who  tell  you  to  go  home  and  mind  your  own  bu- 
siness, for  your  laboring  classes  are  as  badly  off 
as  your  slaves,  will  be  perfectly  in  the  right.  I 
had  always  supposed,  that  when  the  fierce  strife  of 
words  arose  in  our  national  halls  of  legislation 
between  Northerner  and  Southerner,  that  it  was 
because  the  white  laborer  here  was  not  to  be  com- 
pared to  the  black  slave  there, — because  it  was  a 
foul  wrong  and  a  vile  slander,  to  make  the  com- 
parison,— because  the  good  people  of  Ohio  had  sent 
"  Tom  Corwin  the  waggoner's  boy"  to  the  Feder- 
al Senate,  and  the  wood-sawyer's  son  sat  next 
to  the  ex-President's  in  the  schools  of  Boston,— that 
the  Representatives  of  Northern  labor — Horace 
Mann  among  them — were  so  eager  to  repel  the 
taunt  and  invective  of  the  slaveholder,  and  to  roll 


27 

back  upon  him  his  arrogant  assertion.  To  be 
sure,  I  have  not  read  Congressional  speeches  very 
attentively,  nor  am  I  curious  in  discovering  how 
far  the  meridian  under  which  a  man  is  speaking 
influences  his  assertions  and  arguments.  But  no ! 
it  cannot  be.  A  man  like  you  must  know  better 
than  this.  I  am  forced  to  conclude  that  you  were 
tempted  by  the  euphonious  jingle  of  "  bread"  and 
"  head,"  and  the  desire,  like  Mr.  Pecksniff,  of 
turning  an  elegant  period,  without  being  particu- 
larly solicitous  that  it  should  mean  anything. 

Even  at  the  South,  it  would  not  be  correct  to 
say  that  wealth  exercises  a  dangerous  or  inju- 
rious influence.  The  evil  is,  not  that  one  man 
holds  three  slaves,  and  another  three  thousand, 
but  that  any  man  holds  slaves  at  all.  There  is  a 
ruling  class  and  a  subject  class ;  the  one  race 
oppresses  the  other ;  but  there  is  no  social  or  poli- 
tical oppression  exercised  by  particular  members 
of  the  ruling  class  over  the  rest  of  their  body. 
Among  the  whites  there  is  as  much,  or  nearly  as 
much  equality  as  at  the  North.  The  Virginians, 
for  instance,  are  known  to  be  all  on  a  level,  every 
man  we  meet  from  the  state  belonging  to  "  one  of 
the  first  families"  in  it.  But  this,  by  the  way. 

I  was  trying  to  find  your  reason  for  a  very  un- 
reasonable proposition  which  you  had  laid  down. 
The  first  attempt  being  unsuccessful,  we  must  try 


28 

again.  A  few  lines  lower,  on  the  same  page,  (the 
62d,)  I  find  this  sentence  : 

"  Weighed  in  the  balances  of  the  sanctuary,  or 
even  in  the  clumsy  scales  of  human  justice,  there 
is  no  equity  in  the  allotments  which  assign  to  one 
man  but  a  dollar  a  day  with  working,  while  ano- 
ther has  an  income  of  a  dollar  a  minute  without 
working." 

The  clumsy  scales  of  human  justice  have  al- 
ways allowed  one  man  to  be  richer  than  another. 
The  balance  of  the  sanctuary  allows  one  man  to 
be  stronger,  handsomer,  healthier,  wiser,  than 
another.  Is  inequality  in  all  things  injustice? 
Very  possibly  you  hope  to  annihilate  all  these  in- 
equalities,  by  observance  of  the  physical  laws, 
and  to  make  men  all  equal  in  health,  strength, 
beauty  and  intelligence,  as  well  as  in  property. 
If  your  allusion  to  the  Divine  government  of  the 
world  is  intended  to  mean  anything,  you  must 
have  some  such  vision.  As  to  the  human  part  of 
the  proposition,  if,  I  say  again,  your  assertion 
means  anything,  it  is  mere  absolute  Socialism. 
This  man  lives  in  a  fine  house  without  having  to 
work.  I  have  to  work,  and  am  poor.  This  is  un- 
just to  me.  I  have  as  good  a  right  to  the  money 
as  he  has,  and  if  ever  I  grow  strong  enough,  am 
justified  in  seizing  it.  La  propriety  c'est  le  vol. 

It  is  an  old  story  to  expose  such  fallacies,  but 


29 

when  they  are  repeated  and  endorsed  by  a  man  of 
your  position  and  character,  it  seems  necessary  to 
take  some  notice  of  them,  even  at  the  risk  of  say- 
ing over  again  what  has  been  better  said  a  thou- 
sand times  before.  What  is  work  ?  Is  there  no 
work  but  carrying  a  hoe  or  wielding  a  spade  ?  Is 
all  work  equally  valuable ;  or  is  the  value  of 
work  to  the  community  to  be  measured  by  the 
physical  labor  expended,  or  the  time  occupied  in 
it  ?  Supposing  one  man,  by  his  mechanical  inge- 
nuity and  study,  and  enterprize,  produces  an  in- 
vention which  adds  millions  every  year  to  the 
wealth  of  his  country  ;  is  it  unjust  that  he  should 
get  some  droppings  of  the  golden  shower,  and  en- 
joy a  large  fortune  for  the  rest  of  his  life  ?  Is  it 
not  bare  justice  and  honesty  on  the  part  of  the 
nation,  acting  as  between  man  and  man,  to  allow 
him  this  advantage  ?  Nay,  more  ;  as  he  may,  in 
many  instances,  not  have  achieved  his  task  till 
arrived  at  a  time  of  life  when  it  is  too  late  for  him 
to  get  the  full  enjoyment  of  his  worldly  wealth,  is 
it  unjust  that  he  should  be  allowed  to  bequeath  it 
to  his  nearest  and  dearest  relatives  ?  Such  a 
state  of  things  is  a  direct  analogy  with  the  moral 
government  of  the  world,  under  which,  as  you 
yourself  have  taken  pains  to  show,  (p.  19,)  the 
bodily  and  mental  defects  and  excellencies  of  the 
parents  are  very  frequently  inherited  by  the  chil- 


dren.  Suppose  a  man  has  written  a  book  that 
will  last  as  long  as  the  language  in  which  it  is 
written,  and  give  pleasure  and  profit  to  millions  of 
readers  for  successive  ages.  If  he  happens  to  get 
more  than  a  usual  share  of  the  good  things  of  the 
world,  ought  we  to  cry  out  against  this  as  an  in- 
justice ?  Ought  we  not  rather  to  pray  that  it 
might  happen  oftener  ?  Suppose  he  practises  a 
literary  leisure  in  the  intervals  of  composition,  and 
cannot  positively  be  said  to  do  anything  for  some 
months  in  the  year, — is  he  entitled  to  no  more  in- 
dulgence than  the  hod-carrier  at  a  dollar  a  day, 
whose  influence  upon  society  is  confined  to  the 
number  of  houses  he  helps  to  build,  unless  he 
chances  to  break  his  neighbor's  head,  and  figure 
in  the  police  reports  of  the  day  ?  The  "  injustice" 
will  hardly  hold  good  then,  I  think,  any  more 
than  the  "  Feudality."  But  perhaps  rich  people 
are  dangerous  to  the  community,  from  the  mis- 
chief they  do  in  a  negative  way,  by  their  idleness. 
You  are  terribly  severe  upon  idleness  as  "  the 
most  absurd  of  absurdities,  and  the  most  shameful 
of  shames."  But  here,  again,  it  is  necessary  to 
examine  into  the  signification  of  our  words.  By 
idleness,  you  evidently  mean  independence — the 
absence  of  a  fixed,  imperative  daily  occupation, 
and  the  freedom  to  choose  and  vary  one's  occupa- 
tion from  day  to  day.  This  is  clear  by  your  il- 


31 


lustration  of  "  wealth  that  breeds  idleness,"  the 
English  peerage.  This  example  struck  me  the 
more,  because  at  the  very  time  of  reading  your 
pamphlet,  I  happened  to  be  in  daily  communica- 
tion with  a  member  of  that  peerage,  a  very  young 
man,  heir  apparent  to  one  of  the  most  distinguish- 
ed titles  in  his  country,  and  a  harder  working  man 
of  his  age,  or  one  in  a  more  complete  state  of 
training,  physical  and  mental,  I  have  never  met 
with.  He  is  not  obliged  to  labor  for  his  bread  at 
any  fixed  occupation,  and  therefore  you  would 
call  him  a  "  bivalve"  and  other  hard  names,  but 
he  does  the  work  of  two  men  every  day  of  his  life, 
and  his  services  to  the  community  of  which  he  is 
a  member,  are  worth  those  of  a  great  many  day- 
laborers  or  clerks  put  together.  I  have  known 
or  met  a  number  of  young  men  of  the  same  class, 
not  all  equally  learned  or  intelligent,  but  all  of 
them  decidedly  men,  who  had,  by  study  or  exer- 
cise, made  the  most  of  what  natural  gifts  they 
possessed,  and  were  very  respectably  qualified  to 
take  part  in  the  government  of  their  country  ;  and 
would  be  the  first  to  turn  out  and  fight  for  it,  if  it 
were  threatened  from  abroad. 

With  regard  to  the  "  specimens  which  are  be- 
ginning to  abound  here/'  I  fear  it  must  be  conceded 
that  their  time  is  not  always  so  diligently  or  pro- 
fitably employed.  But  they  have  the  excuse  that, 


crwing  to  the  popular  prejudice  already  alluded  to, 
the  most  natural  as  well  as  most  honorable  path 
of  duty  is  virtually  closed  against  them. 

But  let  us  go  a  little  farther  into  first  principles. 
I  positively  deny  that  the  absence  of  occupation  is 
necessarily  in  itself  a  disgraceful  absurdity,  and 
I  still  more  positively  deny  that  work  is  neces- 
sarily in  itself  honorable  and  profitable.  A  great 
deal  of  idleness  is  from  its  very  nature  innocuous. 
A  great  deal  of  occupation  is  directly  mischievous. 
One  of  two  brothers  lives  quietly  and  lazily  in  the 
house  of  his  fathers ;  the  other  works  all  day  to  pull 
it  down,  having  no  means  to  provide  a  new  one.  He 
is  occupied  intensely — but  would  it  not  be  better 
for  himself  and  the  family,  that  he  should  emulate 
his  brother's  idleness  ?  A  demagogue — lecturer, 
member  of  Congress,  or  otherwise — exerts  him- 
self to  foster  social  or  sectional  prejudices,  to  set 
one  class,  or  one  interest,  or  one  division  of  a  coun- 
try, against  another ;  he  is  very  busily  employed ; 
but  is  he  not  more  mischievous  in  his  influence  on 
society  than  the  club-room  lounger,  who  plays 
billiards  half  the  morning?  There  are  many 
hard-working  people  whom  it  would  be  a  mercy 
to  mankind  to  keep  quiet,  and  not  a  few  idle 
people  whom  I,  for  one,  should  be  very  sorry  to 
see  attempting  any  business.  Add  to  this,  that 
a  great  deal  of  what  popularly  passes  for  idleness 


33 

is  in  its  results  very  effective  performance,*  and 
you  have  somewhat  of  a  case  made  out  for  the 
man  of  no  fixed  daily  occupation. 

The  purport  of  the  preceding  paragraphs 
(somewhat  desultory,  I  confess,  but  not  altogether 
undesignedly  so,  from  a  desire  to  view  the  subject 
in  several  lights,)  is  that  the  capitalists  of  this 
country  are,  neither  as  a  class  nor  as  individuals, 
possessed  of  any  unjust  power  in  the  state,  or  in  any 
way  dangerous  to  the  community — which  indeed 
one  would  think  must  be  a  truism  to  any  man  of 
ordinary  intelligence,  information  and  honesty. 

Discussing  the  powers  of  a  class  naturally 
brings  us  to  the  discussion  of  their  responsibilities, 
since  responsibility  is  directly  proportioned  to 
power.  And  since  in  this  case  you  exaggerate 
the  power,  it  is  to  be  expected  that  you  should 
.exaggerate  the  responsibility  also.  Since  you 
compare  the  power  of  wealthy  republicans  to  that 
of  feudal  barons,  we  may  well  suppose  that  you 
will  expect  them  to  exert  as  much  influence  on  the 
state  of  society.  But  your  notion  of  responsibility 

*  "  Imagine  an  active  bustling  little  praetor  under 
Augustus,  how  he  probably  pointed  out  Horace  to  his 
sons,  as  a  moony  kind  of  man,  whose  ways  were  much  to 
be  avoided,  and  told  them  it  was  a  weakness  in  Augustus 
to  like  such  idle  men  about  him,  instead  of  men  of 
business.'' — Helps'  Friends  in  Council. 


34 

is  the  queerest  ever  heard  of,  for  it  consists  in 
holding  the  man  responsible  for  precisely  that 
which  he  does  not  do  and  cannot  prevent.*  Be- 
cause  some  shameless  woman  lives  by  prostitution, 
it  is  wrong  for  Mr.  A.  to  go  to  the  Opera.  Because 
some  vagabond  gets  drunk  and  beats  his  wife,  Mr. 
B.  "  incurs  enormous  guilt"  in  buying  a  Turner 
or  sitting  to  Gray  for  his  portrait.  Because  some 
Irishman,  under  the  baneful  direction  of  his  priest, 
will  not  let  his  children  go  to  school,  Mr.  C.  is  a 
monster  of  iniquity  for  "walling  himself  in"  with 
a  large  library.  We  are  just  about  as  much 
responsible  for  these  things  as  you  are  for  the 
existence  of  slavery  in  the  state  of  Georgia,  and 
by  the  sacrifice  of  all  "  our  superfluous  wealth  and 
time"  could  do  about  as  much  to  prevent  them  as 
you  could  to  put  down  slavery  by  devoting  all 
your  spare  Congressional  pay  to  buying  up  the 
slaves  of  Mr.  Toombs,  or  by  going  yourself  into 
the  great  but  barbarous  nation  of  South  Carolina, 

and  getting  yourself  torn  to  pieces  by  the  savage 

•  u  u-. 

inhabitants. 

Certainly  there  is  one  case  in  which  men  of 
fortune  and  leisure  in  a  large  city  are  responsible 
for  the  vice  and  misery  in  it — when,  by  their  bad 
example,  they  tend  to  increase  both.  If  they  fre- 

*  Pp.  (JO  and  82. 


95 

quent  gambling  tails  and  other  haunts  of  dissipa- 
tion, if  they  patronize  the  black-leg  and  the  bawd, 
if  they  waste  in  dishonor  what  their  fathers  hon- 
orably acquired — then  they,  in  common  with  the 
members  of  other  classes  who  participate  in  these 
practices,  lie  under  the  awful  responsibility  of 
having  produced  misery  by  encouraging  vice. 
But  unless  it  can  be  shown  that  such  melancholy 
examples  are  more  common  in  the  wealthiest  class 
than  in  any  other,  it  is  unfair  and  absurd  to  throw 
upon  it  the  whole  responsibility.  And  I  make 
bold  to  say,  that  whether  in  point  of  obedience  to 
the  laws  of  the  land  or  to  the  requisitions  of 
morality,  this  much  abused  class  will  compare 
favorably  with  the  rest  of  society.  Those  mem- 
bers of  it  who  are  still  making  money,  are  too 
much  engrossed  with  their  business  to  do  mischief 
to  any  one ;  and  if  the  younger  portion  has  some 
follies,  such  as  dancing  ten  hours  a  day  in  New. 
York,  or  training  fast  horses  in  Philadelphia,  or 
making  bad  copies  of  good  pictures  in  Boston, 
these  frivolities  are  injurious  only  to  themselves, 
and  very  far  from  exercising  a  feudal  tyranny 
over  the  rest  of  the  community.  It  would  be 
as  reasonable  to  say  that  the  butterfly  was  a 
dangerous  member  of  the  animal  kingdom,  or  to 
hold  it  responsible  for  the  misdeeds  of  the  lion 
and  the  hyena- 


I  wonder  it  never  occurred  to  you,  that  by  ex- 
aggerating  the  po\ver  of  money,  you  were  fur- 
nishing a  fearful  stimulus  to  the  pursuit  of  wealth 
for  improper  motives.  True,  you  may  say,  "  I 
have  furnished  the  antidote  along  with  the  bane  ;" 
but  the  bane  affects  the  very  persons  who  will  not 
be  affected  by  the  antidote.  You  inflame  a  young 
man's  imagination,  by  suggesting  to  him  the  ac- 
quisition of  an  extra-legal,  irresponsible  power, 
giving  as  a  reason  for  his  not  wishing  to  seek 
wealth,  the  very  thing  that  will  make  him  desire 
it ;  nor  does  the  Hibernian  after-thought  of  ex- 
aggerating the  responsibility  of  the  irresponsible 
power  mend  the  matter  at  all.  It  is  like  the  play 
of  Jack  Sheppard,  where  the  final  execution  of 
the  robber-hero  does  not  present  a  moral  sufficient 
to  counterbalance  the  previous  fascinating  exhi- 
bition of  his  free  and  easy  life. 
.  But  there  is  one  power  which  the  rich  man 
has,  not  only  not  dangerous,  but  in  the  highest 
degree  beneficial  to  the  community.  It  is  the 
power  of  encouraging  Art  and  Literature.  And 
since  the  taste  which  energizes  this  power  is  more 
usually  developed  in  the  second  generation  than 
in  the  first,  it  is  rather  to  be  desired  than  depreca- 
ted, that  we  had  more  men  educated  to  spend 
money.  I  wish  most  heartily  that  there  were 
more  men  among  us  able  to  incur  the  enormous 


guilt  of  having  large  libraries,  and  beautiful  pic- 
ture galleries.  For  as  to  saying  that  these  things 
should  be  the  work  of  the  State,  which  is  the 
dream  of  some  people,  it  would  be  as  reasonable 
to  suppose,  that  virtuous  laws  and  institutions 
could  prevail  in  a  nation  individually  profligate, 
as  that  a  people  can  encourage  art  and  literature, 
if  the  individuals  composing  it  are  semi-literate, 
(if  I  may  be  allowed  to  coin  a  word  for  the  occa- 
sion,) and  unaesthetic. 

Here,  however,  we  come  to  a  direct  issue.  So 
far  from  thinking  the  encouragement  of  literature 
and  the  arts  desirable  for  and  glorious  to  a 
nation,  you  view  them  as  comparatively  useless, 
if  not  altogether  pernicious. 

This  is,  after  all,  our  great  cause  of  quarrel. 
Had  it  not  been  for  these  disparaging  remarks  of 
yours,  I  should  probably  have  remained  silent. 
But,  a.  delighted  worshipper  of  art,  and,  it  would 
be  absurd  to  say  a  literary  man,  but  I  may  say,  a 
constant  and  devoted  student  of  literature — one 
who  believes  these  to  be  two  mighty  influences 
toward,  and  tests  of,  civilization,  is  disposed  to  re- 
sent  most  promptly,  from  motives  of  duty  as  well 
as  feeling,  all  assaults  made  upon  them  by  either 
the  Puritan  or  the  Utilitarian.  Your  remarks,  cer- 
tainly more  honest  and  undisguised  than  any  I 
D 


38 


have  met  with  in  writers  of  the  same  school,  go 
very  far  to  confirm  the  opinion  authorised  by 
many  able  men,  that  the  present  spirit  of  radical- 
ism, and  self-styled  "  progress,"  is  progress  the 
wrong  way,  destructive  of  civilization  and  culti- 
vation, and  altogether  barbarizing  in  its  tendency. 
On  the  subject  of  the  Fine  Arts,  I  shall  not  say 
much.  A  certain  amountof  sympathy  with  them, 
and  appreciation  of  them,  (which  may  exist  with- 
out any  practical  ability  of  performance  in  them,) 
seems  necessary  to  any  person  before  he  can  be 
put  on  common  ground  with  their  advocates. 
They  are  like  the  Spanish  mariner  in  the  ballad — 

"  Yo  no  digo  esta  cancion  sino  a  quien  comigo  va." 

"  Wouldst  thou  learn  my  galley's  secret  ? 
With  my  galley  thou  must  go." 

•'  A  man  may  be  ignorant  of  music  in  a  scienti- 
fic point  of  view ;  he  may  be  unable  to  explain 
critically  its  beneficial  influence  on  himself  and 
others  ;  but  if  he  cannot  feel,  and  does  not 
acknowledge  any  such  influence,  it  seems  to  me 
there  must  be  something  radically  wrong  about 
him.  A  poet  who  is  usually  allowed  to  be  a  great 
master  of  human  nature,  though  he  did  live  before 
the  spiritual  laws  were  discovered  by  the  cranio- 
logists,  has  said — 


39 


"  The  man  who  hath  no  music  in  his  soul, 
*  *  *  * 

•  ••!{.»    '  t  •  i$t   Y.l'JV 
Let  no  suck  man  be  trusted. " 

I  very  much  fear  that  Horace  Mann  has  no 
music  in  his  soul,  and  is  not  to  be  trusted  for  an 
opinion  on  the  virtue  and  value  of  music.  About 
painting  you  have  said  more.  Here  you  lay 
great  stress  on  an  antagonism  which  has  no  exis- 
tence. You  extol  the  beauties  of  nature,  and 
commend  them  to  our  contemplation,  instead  of 
those  of  art.*  Now,  not  only  is  there  no  natural 
antipathy  or  incompatibility  between  the  two 
pursuits,  but  they  naturally  go  together,  and  reci- 
procally encourage  and  help  each  other.  Who  is 
a  more  ardent  admirer  and  diligent  student  of 
nature  than  the  landscape-painter?  He  could 
not  be  a  landscape-painter  if  he  were  not.  This 
eye  for  nature  is  the  first  requisite  in  his  art.  And 
what  makes  one  more  anxious  to  see  a  striking 
or  beautiful  place,  than  the  sight  of  a  truthful 
and  competent  representation  of  it  ?  People  who 
have  learned  to  appreciate  the  beauties  of  art, 
have  acquired,  pari  passu,  a  deep  appreciation  of 
natural  beauty.  People  who  systematically  de- 
spise and  ignore  art,  are  ready  to  practise  any 
barbarity  upon  nature.  I  have  seen  men  who, 

*  Pp.  49,  50. 


40 

standing  before  Raphael's  Transfiguration,  audibly 
wished  they  had  half  the  money  it  cost ;  and  I 
have  seen  the  same  men  reading  newspapers,  when 
they  had  only  to  lift  their  eyes  to  behold  the  most 
gorgeous  autumnal  sunset.  The  utilitarian  who 
sneers  at  the  expenditure  of  five  thousand  dollars 
for  a  picture,  would  be  the  first  man  to  build  a 
rag  mill  over  a  cascade,  or  drain  a  lake  for  an 
acre  of  pasture  ground.  A  Mr.  Jervis,  engineer 
of  a  railroad  company,  recommended  a  route 
which  defaces  the  whole  east  bank  of  the  Hudson, 
as  far  as  the  road  extends,  and  one  of  his  avowed 
reasons  was,  that  the  appearance  of  the  shore 
would  be  improved  by  cutting  away  its  sharp 
curves,  and  filling  up  its  bays !  There  is  a  fair 
specimen  of  the  veneration  for  nature,  that  you 
may  expect  from  an  unartistic  and  unsesthetic 
man. 

But  your  observations  on  literature  merit  a 
more  careful  examination  and  discussion,  for  the 
extraordinary  fallacies  which  they  involve,  and 
that  too  on  a  subject  which  one  cannot  suppose 
you  ignorant  of,  or  incompetent  to  appreciate. 
The  First  Secretary  of  the  Massachusetts  Board 
of  Education  must  be,  I  should  think,  to  some  ex- 
tent, a  literary  man.  Yet  we  find  you  under- 
valuing literature,  because  it  is  not  something 
different  from  itself,  because  it  is  not  intimately 


connected  with  something,  with,  w,hich  it  cannot 
possibly  be  intimately  connected.  You  begin 
with  a  very  ad  captandum  antithesis.  "  Litera- 
ture is  mainly  conversant  with  the  works  of  man, 
while  science  deals  with  the  works  of  God  ;  and 
the  difference  in  the  subject  matter  of  the  two, 
indicates  the  difference  in  their  relative  value, 
and  in  the  power  and  happiness  they  can  respec- 
tively bestow" — (p.  51.)  The  statement  is  very 
effective,  but  it  is  obtained  only  by  leaving  out  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  truth  on  both  sides. 
In  the  first  place,  literature  is  conversant,  not 
only  with  the  works  of  man,  but  with  the  mind  of 
man,  the  greatest  of  all  God's  works  in  this 
world.  Here  the  literary  men  had  the  start  of 
the  metaphysicians  by  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
years.  But,  further,  when  the  poet  celebrates  in 
song  the  beauties  of  nature,  is  he  not  dealing  with 
the  works  of  God  ?  When  the  scientific  man 
writes  or  lectures  about  pumps,  and  pulleys,  and 
screws,  and  levers,  and  all  sorts  of  mechanism,  is 
he  not  conversant  with  the  works  of  man  ?  No 
doubt,  he  does  frequently  deal  with  the  works  of 
God.  Mr.  Jervis  was  dealing  with  the  works  of 
God,  when  he  defaced  the  most  beautiful  river  in 
the  world  ;  and  very  foul  dealing  it  is  sometimes, 
and  a  great  bore  to  the  said  works,  and  not  at  all 
calculated  to  improve  the  mind.  Suppose  I  were 


42 

to  begin  an  argument  with  such  a  sentence  as  this, 
"  Literature  is  conversant  with  mind,  while 
science  deals  with  matter,  and  the  difference  in 
the  subject  of  the  two  indicates  the  difference  in 
their  respective  value."  You  would  cry  out 
against  the  unfairness  of  the  assumption,  but  it 
would  be  just  as  fair  as  yours,  which  asserts  of 
the  whole  field  of  science  what  is  true  only  of  one 
subordinate  department  of  it — criticism. 

"  A  vast  proportion  of  our  literature  consists  of 
what  had  been  written,  or  is  a  reproduction  of 
what  had  been  written  before  the  truths  of  modern 
science  were  discovered." 

And  what  if  it  was  ?  So  far  as  this  has  any 
bearing  on  its  value,  it  would  be  as  much  to  the 
purpose  to  say,  that  it  had  been  written  before 
M.  Soyer  invented  the  omelette  a  la  Beelzebub,  or 
Horace  Greely  set  up  the  New- York  Tribune. 
Do  men  go  to  the  historian,  the  dramatist,  or  the 
poet,  to  learn  natural  science,  or  technical  meta- 
physics? Does  it  enter  into  their  vocation  to 
teach  such  things  ?  Did  any  man  who  knew  the 
meaning  of  words  ever  ask  it  of  them  ?  And  if 
not,  how  are  they,  in  their  literary  capacity,  con- 
cerned by  the  progress  of  science  ?  To  insist  on 
condemning  literature,  because  it  has  been  devel- 
oped faster  than  science,  is  a  most  extraordinary 
instance  of  inability  to  discriminate  between  two 


43 


tilings  essentially  different.  For  not  only  does 
literature  not  depend  upon  science  for  any  of  its 
essentials,  but  any  attempt  to  transfer  the  language 
of  the  one  to  the  other,  is,  ipso  facto,  an  inconve- 
nience, an  absurdity,  or  a  burlesque.  In  mathe- 
matical science,  for  instance,  the  excellence  of  a 
proposition  is,  that  it  be  expressed  in  the  fewest 
words,  consistent  with  intelligibility  ;  indeed,  sym- 
bols are  used  as  much  as  possible  to  the  exclusion 
of  words.  Any  ornament  is  not  merely  super- 
fluous, but  injurious.  The  science  of  law,  though 
not  exactly  similar  in  respect  of  brevity,  is 
equally  sedulous  to  avoid  the  ornaments  and 
graces  of  language.  And,  generally,  the  unpoeti- 
cal  suggestions  and  tendencies  of  science  are  all 
but  proverbial.  When,  therefore,  you  say,  that 
"All  science  may  be  invested  with  the  charms  of 
literature,"  (p.  52,)  and  that  "  there  is  no  reason 
why  literature  should  not  hereafter  be  founded  on 
science,"  (p.  54,)  your  conceit  is  not  merely  impos- 
sible, but  farcical.  Every  word  in  it  is  a  joke, 
to  which  the  Loves  of  the  Triangles,  and  Punch's 
Lays  of  the  Acids  and  Alkalies,  are  sober  serious- 
ness. 

That  the  progress  of  natural  science  should 
have  influence  on  Theology,  was  natural  enough  ; 
and  at  one  or  two  epochs  there  has  seemed  dan- 
ger  of  their  interfering.  Happily  the  danger  was 


44 

only  seeming.  The  wisest  men  have  agreed  that 
Genesis  and  Geology  are  reconcilable,  and  that 
Joshua's  commanding  the  sun  to  stand  still  does 
not  altogether  disprove  the  authenticity  of  the  Old 
Testament.  It  is  generally  admitted  that  the 
Scriptures  were  not  written  to  leach  men  natural 
science. 

Yet  there  was  at  least  a  speciousness  in  the 
claim  that  our  religious  standard  should  conform 
1o  the  progress  of  modern  scientific  discovery ;  but 
to  insist  on  such  a  conformity  in  our  literary  stand- 
ard, or  to  condemn  them  for  not  possessing  it,  has 
no  such  excuse  ;  because,  first,  the  things  are 
totally  different  in  themselves,  and  secondly,  the 
facts  of  the  case  abundantly  refute  you,  it  being, 
for  instance,  well  known  that  while  the  ancient 
Greeks  were  very  badly  off  for  physical  science, 
their  literary  works  take  rank  with  any  since  pro- 
duced.  If  I  were  to  urge  against  the  value  of 
some  recent  discovery  in  Medicine,  Astronomy,  or 
Mechanics,  that  it  was  made  in  an  age  which 
could  boast  of  few  great  literary  men,  you  would 
laugh  at  the  irrelevancy  of  my  objection ;  yet 
this  would  be  the  very  counterpart  of  your  charge 
against  the  "  vast  proportion  of  our  literature," 
that  it  was  written  before  the  truths  of  modern 
science  were  discovered. 

Again  I  find,  about  a  page  farther  on,  that  the 


same  "  vast  proportion  of  the  existing  literature 
has  as  little  relation  to  metaphysical  truth  as  the 
speculations  of  the  schoolmen  before  the  time  of 
Bacon  had  to  physical  laws.  It  is  not  true  that 
Aristotle  and  his  followers  invented  laws  for  na- 
ture which  she  never  owned,  and  explained  her 
phenomena  on  principles  that  never  existed,  than 
it  is  that  most  of  those  works  which  we  call  works 
of  the  imagination  assume  the  existence  of  spirit- 
ual  laws,  such  as  the  spirit  of  man  never  knew, 
and  therefore  produce  results  of  action  and  char- 
acter, such  as  all  experience  repudiates.  Hence 
it  is,  that  I  would  commend  science  more  than  lit- 
erature, as  an  improver  of  the  mind." 

Hence  it  is.  Voila  parceque  votre  fille  est 
muette.  The  milk  in  the  cocoa-nut  is  now  satis- 
factorily accounted  for.  But  let  us  examine  the 
premises  of  this  luminous  inference  with  a  little 
care.  "  Metaphysical  truth."  Does  this  refer  to 
mere  technical  and  formal  metaphysics,  or  to 
those  practical  metaphysics  which  constitute  what 
is  called  a  knowledge  of  character  and  human  na- 
ture, and  enable  the  writer  to  portray  human  na- 
ture accurately.  If  to  the  latter,  it  is  positively 
incorrect  and  contrary  to  the  facts  of  the  case. 
Have  the  great  poets,  dramatists  and  novelists, 
from  Homer  and  Sophocles  to  Shakespeare  and 
Scott,  displayed  an  ignorance  of  human  nature, 


46 

t 

and  misrepresented  it  ?  Are  there  any  evidences 
that  the  writers  of  the  present  or  coming  genera- 
tion will  surpass  them  in  this  respect?  If  it  re- 
fers to  the  former,  it  is  altogether  irrelevant,  and 
but  a  repetition  of  your  former  fallacy  of  confu- 
sion. But  even  if  it  were  not,  are  you  certain 
that  all  existing  science  has  a  correct  relation  to 
metaphysical  truth.  Do  mathematics  and  meta- 
physics, for  example,  always  walk  hand  in  hand  ? 
I  have  seen  mathematical  text- books  of  reputation, 
in  which  fundamental  mechanical  propositions, 
such  as  the  Parallelogram  of  Forces,  were  proved 
by  arguing  in  a  circle.  When  it  comes  to  the 
Doctrine  of  Chances,  which  involves  metaphysical 
as  well  as  mathematical  elements,  your  mere  ma- 
thematicians make  the  wildest  work,  as  any  one 
who  has  the  good  fortune  to  be  a  good  mathemati- 
cian and  metaphysician  both  will  tell  you. 
And  in  one  of  the  best  and  best  known  metaphys- 
ical works  of  the  day,  Mills'  System  of  Logic,  some 
of  the  most  prominent  examples  of  fallacies  are 
taken  from  received  principles  among  physical  phi- 
losophers, such  as  the  Principle  of  the  Sufficient 
Reason. 

But  now  comes  the  overwhelming  paradox  and 
anticlimax  of  all. 

"  Gall,  Spurzheim  and  Combe  have  done  for 
metaphysics,  or  the  science  of  mind,  as  great  a 


work  as  Bacon  did  for  physics,  or  the  laws  of 
matter." 

This  sentence,  I  must  own,  not  only  staggered, 
but  absolutely  upset  me,  and  it  took  me  some 
time  to  recover  from  it.  Well,  thought  I,  many 
hard  things  have  been  said  against  the  sciences, 
but  it  was  left  for  Mr.  Mann  to  give  them  the 
unkindest  cut  of  all,  and  that  under  the  treacher- 
ous disguise  of  friendship.  He  has  thrown  down 
literature  and  the  arts  under  their  feet  for  them  to 
trample  on,  and  it  is  only  to  degrade  them  the 
more  by  setting  up  over  their  heads  in  the  first 
seat  the  very  equivocal  science  of  Craniology,  or, 
as  it  boastfully  styles  itself,  Phrenology.  Verily, 
if  the  great  scientific  lights  of  the  world,  the 
great  chemists,  natural  historians  and  astronomers 
of  Europe,  were  to  hear  this,  methinks  they  would 
cry  out  most  lustily  to  be  delivered  from  such 
friends.  They  would  agree  that  it  was  a  decided 
case  of  non  tali  auxilio. 

One  good,  however,  such  as  it  was,  accrued  to 
me  from  perusing  this  wonderful  sentence.  It 
threw  a  little  light,  dim  to  be  sure,  but  still  a  little, 
on  a  portion  of  your  51st  page,  which  at  first,  not 
pretending  to  understand  the  language  in  which 
it  was  written,  I  had  passed  over  as  a  mere  blank, 
the  words  conveying  no  definite  idea  to  me. 

"  By  far  the  larger  part  of  all  histories,  a  great 


48 


portion  of  epic"  poetry,  and  almost  all  martial 
poetry,  are  addressed  to  the  brutish  propensities 
of  combativeness  and  destructiveness.  But  phy- 
sical science  addresses  itself  to  the  noble  faculty 
of  causality,  and  the  kindred  members  of  its 
group,  including  the  mathematical  powers ;  and 
ethical  science  addresses  itself  both  to  causality 
and  to  conscientiousness,  and  seeks  also  the  sacred 
sanction  of  veneration  for  whatever  it  teaches." 

This,  it  now  appears,  is  the  comparison  of  lite- 
rature and  science  according  to  the  craniological 
standard ;  and  it  reminds  me  of  a  craniologist  I 
once  heard  lecture,  who  argued  that  Newton  and 
Pitt  and  Brougham  were  not  by  any  means 
great  men,  because  they  were  deficient  in  certain 
"  organs."  Still,  however,  it  is  not  perfectly 
satisfactory,  and  leaves  room  for  question  and 
comment.  For  instance,  are  "  combativeness  and 
destructiveness"  necessarily  and  invariably  per- 
nicious attributes,  and  if  so,  why  is  your  model 
young  man,  some  twenty  pages  farther  on,  to 
"  combat  hand  to  hand  with  some  of  those  terrific 
monsters  that  infest  society"  1  Or  is  the  larger 
part  of  all  history  to  be  disregarded  and  thrown 
aside  by  the  young  man  desirous  of  improving 
his  mind,  on  account  of  its  appealing  to  these 
brutish  propensities  ?  Or  is  the  new  regime  to 
eliminate  all  the  combative  and  destructive  part 


49 

out  of  history  1  I  do  not  pretend  to  answer. 
Duvus  sum  non  (Edipus.  If  the  votaries  cannot 
explain  themselves,  we,  the  outsiders,  are  not 
called  on  to  interpret  them.  But  it  seems  pro- 
bable that  the  last  supposition  may  be  the  correct 
one,  from  what  follows,  where  you  say  that 
"ethical  philosophy  and  education,  as  well  as 
several  other  things,  can  never  be  properly  under- 
stood  but  in  the  light  of  their  (Spurzheim  and 
Gall's)  philosophy."  Now,  as  this  philosophy  was 
only  invented  in  the  year  1809,  it  follows  that 
before  that  time  there  was  no  proper  understand- 
ing of  education  or  ethical  science,  a  supposition 
very  flattering  to  the  vanity  of  the  disciples  of 
progress,  but  not  exactly  confirmed  by  the  record 
of  history  or  the  experience  of  the  student's  re- 
searches. 

Once  more, 

"  As  the  science  of  zoology  has  hunted  krakens, 
phoenixes,  unicorns  and  vampires  [?]  from  the 
animal  kingdom  ;  as  the  science  of  astronomy  has 
swept  pestilential  and  war-portending  comets, 
and  all  the  terrors  and  the  follies  of  astrology, 
from  the  sky ;  as  a  knowledge  of  chemistry  has 
made  the  notion  of  charms  and  philters  and  uni- 
versal remedies,  and  the  philosopher's  stone, 
ridiculous  and  contemptible ;  as  an  improved 
knowledge  of  the  operations  of  nature  around  us 


has  banished  fairies,  and  gnomes,  and  ghosts  and 
witches,  and  a  belief  in  dreams  and  signs,  from  all 
respectable  society  ;  [how  comes  it  then  that  so 
many  craniologists  believe  in  the  Rochester 
knockings  ?]  so  will  an  analytical  knowledge  of 
the  faculties  of  the  human  mind,  of  their  special 
functions  and  ends,  and  of  their  related  objects  in 
the  world  of  matter  and  in  the  world  of  spirit, 
sweep  into  forgetfulness  four-fifths  of  what  is 
called  literature."  (Pp.  53-4.) 

Now  that  four-fifths,  and  even  a  greater  pro- 
portion of  the  books  composing  the  current 
literature  of  the  day,  are  destined  to  oblivion, 
there  can  be  no  doubt.  But  this  is  not  true  of 
works  on  literature  alone,  it  is  equally  so  of 
works  on  the  sciences.  They  have  the  same  ele- 
ments of  decay,  their  multiplication  beyond  the 
power  of  perusal,  and  the  varying  nature  of  their 
subject-matter — the  latter  indeed  to  a  greater1 
extent  than  any  merely  literary  productions.  The 
discoveries  continually  made  in  the  physical  sci- 
ences must  render  a  number  of  the  books  on 
them  obsolete ;  so  must  the  discoveries  and 
fashions  (for  there  is  a  great  deal  of  fashion 
among  mathematicians,  though  they  are  not  gene- 
rally suspected  of  it,)  in  pure  mathematics.  No 
schools  of  literature  have  succeeded  and  dethroned 
one  another  so  fast  as  the  schools  of  modern  meta- 


51 

physics.  Astronomers  tell  us  that  some  fixed 
stars  may  never  be  visible  on  this  earth  until  after 
they  have  ceased  to  exist ;  and  in  like  manner,  a 
German  writer  on  mental  philosophy  is  frequently 
exploded  and  his  theory  upset  by  his  countrymen, 
just  as  England,  France,  and  America  are  be- 
ginning to  take  an  interest  in  him.  Nor  do  the 
writings  of  the  craniologists  in  any  way  influence 
or  accelerate  the  destruction  of  our  present  lite- 
rature, except  by  their  own  numercial  addition 
to  the  perishing  portion  of  it.  As  to  your  sug- 
gestion of  craniologizing  all  future  literature,  it  is 
the  essence  of  farce.  One  hardly  knows  how  to 
attempt  treating  such  a  proposition  seriously.  To 
be  sure,  there  are  "  reforms"  equally  absurd  to 
keep  it  in  countenance.  Not  very  long  ago  I 
chanced  to  see  the  writings  of  some  people  who 
called  themselves  (if  I  recollect  rightly)  Phonetics, 
modestly  claimedj  to  have  invented  a  perfect 
alphabet,  and  seriously  proposed  to  alter  the 
spelling  of  the  whole  language,  and  oblige  every 
existing  book  to  be  rewritten  and  reprinted. 

Here,  then,  we  arrive  at  the  great  conclusions  of 
your  advice  to  young  men,  which  I  have  found  it 
convenient  to  consider  in  a  nearly  inverse  order — 
a  dogma,  that  craniology  is  at  the  head  of  all  de- 
sirable human  knowledge — another  dogma,  that 
rich  men  are  dangerous  to  the  community, — a  de- 


52 

duction  that  it  is  wrong  to  encourage  literature 
and  the  arts,  and  a  practical  inference  that  the 
best  use  a  man  can  make  of  his  money  is  to  found 
a  systematically  irreligious  college  with  it. 

"  Amphora  coepit 
Institui ;  currente  rota  cur  urceus  exit  7" 

For  really,  if  we  deduct  the  dietetic  maxims,  very 
proper  in  themselves,  though  expressed  with  un- 
necessary extravagance  and  violence  of  language; 
and  the  description  of  the  beauties  of  the  natural 
world,  gorgeous  and  glowing  enough  to  command 
admiration  as  a  mere  piece  of  writing,  but  of  no 
particular  value  in  their  connection ;  these  four 
points  are  the  principal  original  proposition  in  your 
lecture. 

Yet  I  must  own  that,  to  myself,  the  perusal  of  your 
"  Thoughts"  caused  no  disappointment.  1  enjoy- 
ed the  blessing  promised  by  Dean  Swift  to  those 
who  expect  nothing.  I  never  do  expect  anything 
from  modern  radicalism.  For  the  magnificence 
of  its  general  promises  is  the  inverse  measure  of 
its  particular  performance.  Its  professions  and 
practices  form  a  contrast  that  would  be  amusing, 
were  it  not  so  lamentable.  Proclaiming  fraternity 
and  kindred  intercourse  among  all  nations,  it  be- 
gins by  destroying  the  citizen's  affection  for  his 
own  country.  Preaching  brotherly  love  and  sym- 


53 

pathy  among  all  classes  of  the  community,  it  stim- 
ulates one  class  against  another  by  unfounded  in- 
vectives. Denying  the  claims  and  value  of  an- 
cient lore,  it  confers  the  once  honored  title  of  pro- 
fessor on  every  itinerant  cobler.  Parading  a 
great  show  of  reverence  for  the  physical  and  me- 
taphysical sciences,  it  sets  up  over  their  heads  the 
pseudo-sciences  of  craniology  and  mesmerism. 
Barely  deigning  to  believe  in  God,  it  has  no  hesi- 
tation to  believe  in  the  absurdest  ghosts.  Osten- 
tatious at  times  in  its  patronage  of  Christianity,  it 
carefully  drops  out  all  the  vitality  of  the  system, 
and  virtually  turns  the  Saviour  of  mankind  out  of 
his  own  religion.  In  short,  it  is,  in  all  general 
phraseology,  sublime  and  comprehensive, — in  all 
minutiae  of  ^detail,  narrow-minded  and  unwise, — 
reminding  one  perpetually  of  the  astrologer  in  the 
fable,  who  was  so  occupied  in  watching  the  stars, 
that  he  never  saw  the  pit  under  his  nose  until  he 
tumbled  into  it. 

Hoping  that  your  future  political  and  social 
career  may  be  saved  from  some  of  these  inconsis- 
tencies, that  your  philanthropic  zeal  may  be  tem- 
pered by  a  discriminating  judgment,  and  the  char- 
ity you  feel  for  some  classes  may  be  extended  to 
all ;  that  you  may  learn  to  consider  a  man  of  pro- 
perty as  not  necessarily  an  enemy  to  society,  and 
the  claims  of  religion,  as  well  as  those  of  benevo- 


UCSB  LIBRARY 

54 


4ence,  as  alike  compatible  with  a  love  of  literature 
and  a  corresponding  advancement  in  the  arts  and 
sciences, 

I  remain 

Your  obedient  servant, 

CHARLES  ASTOR  BRISTED. 
New  York,  May  15,  1850. 


A    fl in n  « no          "" " 


•• 
• 

•  •  •    .  . 

--  •  -  '  - 

i     '    •• 

' 

....  .  . 

.  •    •  •  •    : 


. 

• 
, 

: 


